Assembly Square Infill and Small Developments | Somerville

stick n move said:
Now I can see the placement. Looks to be angled side to side vs vertical like above, but its the right parcel. Should be a great addition. Is this an hq or just office space? Anyone know if the building to the right above is a placeholder or proposal.
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According to the article, this is a North American HQ (Puma is a German company). The building the right is a placeholder. While Parcel 8 has been revealed and proposed, Parcel 7A/B have not.
 
Is this one parcel 8?

block8.0.jpg
 
Best Development overall in my opinion has been Assembly Row in 2017-2018.
#1 Modern
#2 Transit accessible
#3 Great location

Brilliant A+ across the board.

Also the overall evolution of Assembly row has been amazing.
 
Couple of quick questions.
Is the Puma building going to be taller than the Partners building?
Has anything happened with parcel 8 in a while, seems to be moving much slower than the rest of the development. I know there was a lot of too and fro about affordable housing.
 
I love the get with Puma as a tenant. Between Partners and Puma (and hopefully more down the road), the concentration of offices will really put the mix in mixed use. I've been over here a few times during weekdays (I work near N. Station, this is an easy lunch trip) and it's great from the shoppers perspective, but has to be tough on business. Having 9-5 workers there will certainly help.

Related: I do hope something happens with parcel 8 soon. I worry about Nero and Smoke Shop being on such islands/dead zones for too long. Frankly, any visitor to Assembly is likely to miss them because the area around them is so uninviting. An extension of the retail strip is absolutely a must. The sooner the better.
 
XMBLY- “its like Assembly, but with an X.” If your pronouncing it wrong that means your doing it right.

Anyways that single tower at least appears to have some good height for those of you waiting.
 
Equilibria said:
Puma moving 550 jobs in from Westford, out from the Government Center Garage (closing for tower construction).
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Boy would that be a brutal commute to AR if you lived near Westford. I imagine that's part of the thinking of announcing now - they are hoping that the existing workers there will quit instead of the inevitable layoffs.
 
jklo said:
Boy would that be a brutal commute to AR if you lived near Westford. I imagine that's part of the thinking of announcing now - they are hoping that the existing workers there will quit instead of the inevitable layoffs.
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Similar to Phillips moving to Cambridge from Andover.
 
jklo said:
Boy would that be a brutal commute to AR if you lived near Westford. I imagine that's part of the thinking of announcing now - they are hoping that the existing workers there will quit instead of the inevitable layoffs.
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I'm actually a little surprised this sort of thing has never been litigated, accusing a company like Puma of age discrimination for relocating to areas convenient to hip, younger people. Unlikely to win, but I'd have expected someone to try it.
 
Equilibria said:
I'm actually a little surprised this sort of thing has never been litigated, accusing a company like Puma of age discrimination for relocating to areas convenient to hip, younger people. Unlikely to win, but I'd have expected someone to try it.
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I have actually heard company execs for a company who relocated to the Seaport (to be unnamed) admit behind closed doors that their move was as much about shedding older, less tech savvy current employees, as it was about attracting younger, more tech savvy employees. They actually had data from an HR consultant on how many people were unlikely to make the move because of the commute.

Shedding older workers who are expensive and not keeping their skill sets up to date is definitely a feature, not an accidental consequence, of these moves into the urban core.
 
The unemployment rate is 3.9%. Are companies really looking to shed workers? Who knows if they can find new ones and at what cost given demand for labor in Boston. If we were in a recession I would find it easier to believe. Here I’m skeptical.
 
Clearly the change does real harm to existing workers, but job sprawl is much worse for accessibility than firms locating in urban or near-urban locations (in addition to being better for transit/the environment/worker mobility/etc).
 
Puma's Westford HQ is a little less than 5 miles from the Littleton stop on the Fitchburg Line, and MRTA has a bus route out of the station hitting Puma, IBM, and downtown Littleton. So their employees have long been able to enjoy car-free or car-few commutes.

Biggest problem with the Assembly relocation for existing employees is that the Littleton and North Billerica lots and Lowell garage are amongst the most perennially overstuffed on the entire northside.
 
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